Thursday, May 17, 2012

Engadget has published a good comparison of 4k cinema in comparison to 720p and 1080p. They did their tests with a Sony 4k projector, since there are very few monitors that can produce resolution that high.

The tests reveal what many people, myself included, have thought for some time: even with 1080p, huge resolutions are only necessary for those with huge displays. I have a 42" TV in my living room. I absolutely cannot tell the difference between 1080p and 720p unless I am sitting very close.

The only way that this resolution will EVER make sense is with a huge projector screen. I have never been one to say "Ennh! Crazy Kids! Black & white TV's are good enough!" I am not that guy. But when a technological advance is indistinguishable from the previous generation in standard use, there is no point aside from numbers.

For the home-theater aficionados among us, though, this is kick-ass. As Engadget showed, the 4k resolution is quite noticeable on a large screen, and the Sony doesn't suffer the significant drop in brightness that many home projectors did back in the transition to HD from SD in the late 1990's. If you have the money, and more important I think, the space, this is one delicious luxury. For the first time in history, a well-funded home theater can be a comparable experience to a real theater.

Monday, May 7, 2012

38-39°C is a truly remarkably film. I had no idea that stuff of this experimental level was coming out of CalArts. The story is pretty abstract, to its detriment, and unless told, you would be unable to figure out that it is an artistic take on a father/son relationship. But I don't care about that. I care about the eye-popping richness of the animation. This is epic work.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

I am in the middle of writing an article about the state of the movie industry. In a section discussing the growing disconnect between the all-time best performing movies and the best opening weekend movies, I made the prediction that with the trajectory as it is, we would see a $200 million opening within the next five years.

Well, I was so incredibly conservative in that estimate that it is now funny. The Avengers just took in $200 million on its opening weekend, essentially guaranteeing it a $1 billion worldwide take. Truly epic. And even if we assume that this movie bucks general trends and only earns 1/3 of its take on opening weekend, that still wouldn't put it in the top-25 all time movies. I see that as a problem.

About Cartoon Vixens

I started this blog to celebrate a likely-unhealthy obsession with cartoon vixens. I also started it to share high-quality, high-resolution images of said cartoon characters since they're usually pretty hard to find online. I'll upload the images and also the vector files (either .png or .psd) so you can mess around with them yourself.

I do all of my voice recording with services and hardware provided by Hippo Studios.